Intending to Marry ... Students’ Behavioural Intention towards Family Forming

The current article provides an overview of the behavioural intention of students towards family forming. The aim is to test the impact of the socio-demographic background, family-related attitudes and the orientations of young adults and the opinion of significant others on the preference of family form. The theoretical framework focuses on the reasoned action theory and on the dispute between social learning and selection approaches. Empirical analyses demonstrate that gender and family-related attitudes and orientations have significant effects on family forming intentions. The findings provide insights into the debate between the social learning theory and the selection approach by showing that the intention to prefer unmarried cohabitation does not depend on current living arrangements or cohabitation experiences at the individual level.